The Bird in Last Year's Nest

by Shaun Herron

  “What?”

  “I liked killing.”

  “You? No. You’re inventing that for the sake of the argument.”

  “No. Oh, no. I could remember the times when I gave a clerk or a manager three seconds to produce a key and I was saying to myself, I hope he won’t, or, I hope the bastard takes four seconds. It made everything simpler. Just kill. The appetite grows. Under the veneer, we’re savages. Violence lets the savage loose. It solves everything—except what to do with its consequences. These ETA youngsters who rob banks for Fifth Assembly funds—do you think it’s the funds or the success that matter most after the second time? No, it’s the power. They can do it. They like doing it. And in the end you become the thing you fight against. There was no difference in the end between our band and the Civil Guard. We were the same. We did the same. We felt the same.”

  “So there are no good causes?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m only saying, keep away from this one. The separation of these Basque provinces from Spain is not a good cause.”

  Mauro could forgive his father his middle-aged pedantry. “Nonetheless, I love you deeply and I am proud of what you’ve told me,” he said. “Like it or not.”

  How does a man reject his son’s pride in him? Ugalde did not try. He wanted to get home, to Maria. He was uneasily assured. By one o’clock in the morning, he was home.

  The sight and touch of her sweetened his mind. “It’s well,” he said. “He knows and he understands. I’m afraid he doesn’t agree with us about everything; but medicine will keep him out of any trouble. He’s got a stiff course—stiffer than it was in my day.” Having done what he could to reassure himself and Maria, they went to bed.

  “We haven’t since last Wednesday,” she said in the dark, to welcome him home.

  “In the morning,” he said, “and whenever you like, all day tomorrow. Tonight, I’m weary.”

  She was relieved and went gratefully to sleep. But he did not sleep well. There were uncertain things lurking somewhere in his mind. Not things he could control by discretion and restraint and silence. Things just out of reach; like the dangers in his dreams.

  BOOK TWO

  If the Abbot sings well, the acolyte is not far behind.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  5

  Many who go for wool come back shorn.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  It was an innocent enough excursion for a group of friends on a Sunday; down the coast to Castro Urdiales to look at the medieval church of Santa Maria and the ruins of the Templar castle; and maybe to look at the sea if there was time. Then inland among the mountains to Valmaseda and lunch in some meadow there. Its innocence, Reis said, was as obvious as a virgin’s giggle.

  Two cars. Haro had the use of the family car for the day and Mauro rode with him. “You’ll have to get your father’s car,” Mauro had told him, “we can’t talk on my bike.”

  Abril, the mechanic from Fabrica Echevarria S.A.—the steel workers at Echevarria were also on an illegal strike; three illegal strikes now running at once, the ship builders, the steel workers and the fishermen—and Pureza, the girl from the hire-car company, drove ahead with Reis. Reis was the rich one, in his father’s wine business. Caballero Andante they called him. He pranced through their lives and their operations as if he were riding an Arabian stallion and had a cloak slung over one shoulder. It was how he liked to be thought of.

  So they met outside the Omega watch shop on the corner of the Plaza de Federico Moyua where the Calle Elcano runs into the plaza across from the Carlton Hotel. There was nothing about that to merit anyone’s attention: all the young people met at the Omega corner on Sunday mornings, and the buses came from six-thirty on and took them to the mountains to walk, and play games and talk, and eat their pack lunches. It kept them out of mischief: the harmless Sundays of Bilbao’s harmless young.

  But first: Pureza, who was gay and virtuous and never allowed Mauro to quite remove her pants, must go to Mass. That could be dealt with on the way. They would stop at Somorrostro. Mass there, Pureza said with pious economy, was usually half an hour. And it looked high-minded, five young people, four young men and a pretty young woman stopping on the road for Mass, on a Sunday excursion. It was a reasonable reflection of the Methodist Catholicism of the Basques, old and young.

  The church looked a bit like a desert mission on a movie set in New Mexico, with its gently canted tile roof and a shingled cloister around three sides, supported by thick tree trunks. A thin rain fell and the cloister filled up with waiting worshippers, not anxious to sit inside when they could stand outside in the unscented air. Then the bell stopped and like school children at the end of a recess they went in, slowly, in order.

  Mauro and his friends found chairs in one row. The black cassocked priest came to the lectern and read a verse of a hymn. Then he sang two lines of the hymn, in Basque; the choir in the loft sang the same two lines; the congregation sang them; like a singing class in school. The priest went through the verse, two lines by two; then the choir, then the congregation. At last, they sang the whole verse, together. It was a pleasant melody, a folk melody, like a lullaby. In their loyal Catholicism they had never heard of Methodism.

  A powerful smell of garlic drifted back from the woman in the row ahead.

  “My God,” Pureza whispered to Mauro, reading the meaning of a new priest, all in white, “it’s an hour this morning.” They slipped out of their row and tiptoed through to a side door.

  “We’ve been to Mass,” Mauro said, satisfied. “Virtue made manifest.”

  They drove virtuously. Mauro said, “When they pick a bank for us, I wish they’d think more about the escape routes than they do about the manager’s sex life.”

  Haro laughed. “Tell me about his sex life.” They had touched the hem of the church’s garment and the real world of the moment flowed back into place.

  “All I know yet is that he has two sex lives, Home and Away. I’ll get all the details when I make my confession in St. Yago’s at Valmaseda. I’ve never taken a notebook to confession before. I’ve never been to confession on a Sunday before. Has anybody? I hope my confessor knows more than two ways out of the town.” But before that, the Sunday excursion to Castro Urdiales.

  They walked in Castro Urdiales. Pureza, whose work for the car-hire company involved her in summer-conducted tours, gave them a tour of the old Gothic church. “You will notice,” she declaimed professionally and gathered other Sunday drivers and their children to them, “that the altar in this ancient fortress-church was set on a circular stone platform well away from the rear wall so that the priest could celebrate from behind the altar. The Church is under the impression that by ordering this to be done in all churches today, it has reformed something. It is often difficult for those in authority to realize that the benefits they think they confer upon us, were familiar to the cruel Middle Ages.”

  It got a nervous titter from some of the hangers-on who drifted quietly away. The young make bad jokes. They were like partly grown children, showing off at a picnic. Pureza kept a sly eye on Mauro to confirm his response.

  She entertained her young friends and took them behind the church to the windy headland on which stood the ruins of the Castle of Santa Aña de los Templarios. “The thing to note here,” she intoned, “is that in the standing remains of this castle, which was a castle of a religious order of buccaneers no more virtuous or law-abiding than England’s Sir Francis Drake, there stands a lighthouse. At night, it lights the way to a great modern mystery. Down there.”

  She pointed down to the head of the harbor and they climbed down. “Here is the mystery.” Under the causeway leading to the castle, a concrete wall had been built, five feet thick and twenty feet above the level of the sea. It enclosed a small pointless body of water as big as a tennis court. The enclosed water surged with the powerful motion of the sea outside. Pureza took Mauro’s hand and climbed on top of the wall. “That wall,” she said dramatically, “was built to ke
ep the sea out of this small area, so that it could be filled in. The wall is founded on bedrock. There is no way for the ocean to come in here. Yet, look at it.” A wave hit the outer wall and the little pond surged and rose and angrily tumbled. “It comes in just the same.” She jumped down from the wall. “Nothing, it seems, can stop a determined force.”

  I’ll marry Pureza when I can, Mauro thought, and said that it was time to go. She clowns and larks about but under it she’s loving and strong; she’s Arrabal stuff, like Mother, he thought, and wished she were back with him in Haro’s car. He wanted to talk to her about the heart-leaping beauty of the road up from the coast to Valmaseda. When she rode on the back of his motorbike, they could only shout. He talked to Haro instead, and the things he could talk about with Haro were—well, not the things he talked about with Pureza.

  “The Assembly needs money. There’ll be three bank operations far apart on the same day. They agree that we’ll keep five percent of whatever we get in Valmaseda for our own expenses in the group.”

  “There won’t be much in the bank at Valmaseda, will there?”

  “Maybe not, but there’ll be dirty notes and there’ll be three bank jobs on the same day.”

  “Who goes in?”

  “Us. You and me.”

  It was in his bloodstream. He could feel it running. He had thought all week about Luis Arrabal and Dion Ugalde and his euphoria swelled. It was in his bloodstream. In the course of a few days Dion Ugalde and the country doctor of Burguete had been separated in his mind. The country doctor was the man he called Father and kept far from him when the business of the Fifth Assembly was on his mind or in his hand. At such times Dion Ugalde was his constant companion, a different breed of man. He had examined the arguments the country doctor presented in Bermeo. He understood them. But it was not true that overwhelming power could not be weakened to a point where other forces could destroy it utterly. In the Bilbao area alone, three illegal strikes were going on. Six shipyard workers had been shot and two dozen jailed, but the workers were still out. The climate was changing and changing quickly and time and again in history tiny groups that would not be turned aside, gathered to them the great upsurging will of the masses and put down the mighty from their seats. The country doctor would see it done. Dion Ugalde would cheer it.

  He also gave some thought to the danger he represented to the country doctor and his wife. But there was no danger. His unit had been active for eighteen months, unscathed, unsuspected and successful. He would not be caught. He put it from his mind; no, he did not, he strutted a little in his mind, then put the thought of danger from it.

  “We’ll win, Haro. The time isn’t far away.”

  “Then we should do something about industrial pollution,” Haro said. “Look at that river.”

  They were driving beside the Rio Cadagua, grey with foaming filth from the pulp mills and furniture factories at Valmaseda that fouled the tight, green and beautiful mountain valleys below the town. Streamers of colored and dirty plastic clung to the highest branches of the bushes on the bank, right up to the flood level of the spring spate.

  “Whoever likes can attend to that. I want nothing but the life of a country doctor. You’d make a good politician, Haro.”

  “It’s funny. I don’t think I’m all that interested in politics.”

  They didn’t pursue this oddity. They were in Valmaseda, searching for a place to park, as far apart as they could put two cars. They were not to meet in the town.

  Mass was over. The bars were crowded. Children played around the church doors, sat in the stone bishops’ seats on either side of the main entrance, or bought collecting cards from the tables set up opposite the church to sell pious literature. The square was littered with the blue and green envelopes in which the collecting cards were sold. It was a shabby square. In a crowded bar the municipal policeman drank with his neighbors, breaking the law.

  “That’s the great thing about the authoritarian state,” Mauro said authoritatively when they left the bar, “it can’t depend on its servants. That’s what’s wrong with the Civil Guard—the State can always depend on them.”

  Haro went back to the bar. Mauro went into the church. He read the names on the confessional boxes. Father Carraseal, Father Bernaola. Father Bernaola was away in Burgos at some conference or other. Mauro did not know and was not allowed to know the name of the priest who would be in Bernaola’s box. He knew only what to say to the man who would be there. Out of the world of play into the other world.

  He went in. “Father,” he said.

  “My son.” The voice was boyish. Mauro wondered if the man on the other side of the screen was really a priest. Or a bank clerk running dangerous risks?

  “All the hours shower blows on a man,” Mauro said. “The last sends him to the tomb.” He took his tiny notebook and a pencil from his pocket.

  The priest said, “The bay is of one mind, he who saddles him of another.”

  “When you corner a cat he turns into a lion.”

  “God gives the wound and he will give the medicine.”

  “What do I need to know?” The thought of a bank clerk dominated his mind. He caught himself and added hastily, “Father.”

  “His name is Miguel Fuertes. He is tall, thin, fifty years old, stoops a bit and has heavy black hair. He lives in an apartment over the bank, with his wife. His private door is at the back of the building.”

  “Slowly, please, Father.” The cold ghostly sounds of the church rustled causelessly under its vaulting, like eavesdroppers passing the word of sin in the sanctuary.

  The priest slowed down, but he was nervous. “Be quick,” he whispered sharply. “He has a woman in Bilbao. She is well off, a spinster of about forty, Marie Agesta. She was a customer of his at another branch of the bank. She lives in one of the old apartments above the expensive shops on Calle Elcano. Her apartment is number four. Her name is on the door. He spends every other weekend with her. He is at home this weekend. He will be with her next weekend. He sits, on his Sundays at home, in the bar straight across the square from the front doors of the church. Playing cards for drinks. He is there now, the tall one, thin, unhappy looking, and he stoops.”

  Several sets of footfalls echoed in the church—adults and their children. The steps of the children stopped outside the next box and a woman’s voice said sharply, “No! Don’t go in there.” The steps moved on.

  Mauro struggled with his pencil, trying to write legibly in his bending book.

  The priest was hurrying again, repeating himself nervously. He wanted Mauro away from him.

  “Please, Father, slowly.”

  “I’m sorry. Write quickly.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Does his wife know where he is when he’s in Bilbao?”

  “She says he goes to spend every second weekend playing cards with old friends. She doesn’t think a bank manager should play cards. Maybe she really knows. I don’t know.”

  “There are only two roads out of Valmaseda, Father. Both have junctions, north and south, too close to the town. Advise me.”

  “Have a car waiting for you on this side of Antuñano, beyond the junction to the south. It is on the left fork from the junction. Walk there, across the mountain. It is not more than three kilometers over the mountain. Then go back to Bilbao by way of Arceniega and Amurrio on the N-six twenty-five. Have a woman driver. The Civil Guard up here is more tolerant of women.”

  “Where do I leave the money?”

  “That depends on the time you bring it.”

  “I’ll be in the bank at midnight, next Sunday night.”

  “The town is sleeping at midnight, ready for Monday morning. Leave it inside the south door of the church. It will be unlocked. I’ll wait inside till two. If you are later than that, take it with you. It will be collected.”

  “No. I’ll not carry that much money at night.”

  “Then be here before two in the m
orning. I’ll not wait longer. I’ll have to account for my movements as it is. Will you please hurry?”

  “Where is the safe?”

  “In his office. A small room at the back. He’ll have every key in the bank in his pockets. You’ll have no trouble.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Make your confession.”

  Mauro groped for something to say. “1 have carnal desires, Father.”

  “Haven’t we all. Pray for the Homeland and go with God.”

  He prayed for the Homeland and collected Haro. They went to the bar across the square. The wine here was two pesetas dearer than in the other bar—five pesetas for a poorly filled glass. And the place was almost empty. It was a better class bar, cleaner, well furnished and with a dining area down three steps at the far end.

  Four men were playing cards at one of the tables. A fat woman and a man came into the bar and ordered drinks. Ten pesetas worth. They drank quickly and offered the woman behind the counter a thousand-peseta note. In the attendant commotion, Mauro said, “There he is. The skinny, stooped one at the far side of that table.” The man looked melancholy. “Perhaps he is losing,” Haro said.

  They watched him with clinical eyes through two drinks and the long, loud disputation about the ethics of drinking first and afterwards offering a thousand pesetas for a ten-peseta order. He’s a nervous man, they decided. He gnawed on his fingernails.

  “We’ll have to walk over the mountain,” Mauro explained. “You’d better go and tell Pureza to take your car and wait for us on this side of Antuñano. We might as well walk it now. We’ll have to do it in the dark a week from now. And tell the others to go with her and time the run from Antuñano to Bilbao through Arceniega and Amurrio at a careful speed. We want to know everything before the night.”